OCCASIONAL PIECE A brief history of spa therapy

Bathing in thermal water has an impressive history and continuing popularity. In this paper a brief overview of the use of water in medicine over the centuries is given. NOMENCLATURE The word “spa ” may be derived from the Walloon word“espa ” meaning fountain.1 2 This, in turn, came from thename of the Belgian town Spa, where in the 14th century a curative, thermal spring was discovered. Spa may also origi-nate from the Latin word “spagere ” (to scatter, sprinkle, mois-ten) or may be an acronym of the Latin phrase “sanitas per aquas ” (health through water).2 In Britain, the word spa is still used, whereas in the rest of Europe the term “thermal waters” is preferred. Bathing in thermal water for therapeutic purposes has several descriptions (for example, taking the waters, balneotherapy, spa therapy, hydrotherapy), which will all be used throughout this paper, and are more or less inter-changeable